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Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Barry Sheerman

Well done to Barry Sheerman for bringing up the awful situation many teachers face when they are accused of doing something wrong by a pupil (or sometimes, sadly by another teacher or classroom assistant). In the vast majority of cases, the accusation is trivial and has been made up by a wretch looking for revenge on a teacher who has confiscated their mobile phone, given them a detention or thrown them out of the classroom for being a pain. There's an article here

In every case I ever saw, it could all have been sorted out in less than an hour if all parties involved had been immediately interviewed by the Head. If a child is making false accusations then they need a severe punishment and if it looks like the teacher actually did something seriously wrong then the police could be involved.

What actually happens is that the unfortunate teacher gets suspended whilst a tediously slow 'investigation' is carried out. Months later when the pupil is found to be lying there is no comeback on them, so they cheerfully do it again.

(Incidentally it's not uncommon for pupils who have worked out how the system operates, to threaten to make a complaint against a teacher, when for example you attempt to remove their MP3 player. It' a very effective move)

You've hit the nail on the head there, Mr C, there is absolutely no deterrent for pupils making up stories like this. If they get away with it, the teacher is sacked and they win, if they are caught lying they're back in class the next day, doubtless making up the next accusation.

In the meantime, innocent or guilty, the teacher is suspended and the education of the other kids in the class is disrupted.

Now the GTC has decided to police us outside of school, and also decide what beliefs we can have, the possibilities for serial wolf criers to wreak havoc on our schools has increased exponentially. All they have to say now is "I saw Mr K staggering out of a pub, giving Miss J a kiss before heading off to a BNP meeting on Saturday," and our career is over.